Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Whipped Shortbread (DISASTER!)

OH MY GOD!!! This is the weirdest cookie disaster experience I have ever had. And the really odd part was I didn't even know it till the end. I was stoked about these cookies! I'm like "Oh yeah, oh yeah, these cookies are going to rock!" I have some left over chocolate ganache in the fridge and I thought I would either dip or fill (like little sandwiches) some shortbread cookies with it. Anyway, the thing about this recipe is, you whip the ingredients for a full 10 minutes until it's the consistency of whipped cream. I did that and wow, did the cookie dough look good and tasted good! Then I fill the pastry bag and start to pipe the cookies onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Oh my word!!! It piped like a flippin dream! This was my new favorite shortbread recipe. (Did I mention that I had found this recipe on a very popular blog and hers looked PERFECT and she loved this recipe). I'm telling you, I was ready to consider this my "go to" recipe!!! The perfectness continued; they come out of the oven looking like a million bucks. Beautiful light brown around the edges and looking still swirled from being piped. I let them cool and then.....here comes the shocking part. I went to grab one of the cookies to taste it and it disinigrated in my fingers. Disinigrated I tell you! (don't know if I spelled that word right but you know what I mean). It literally felt like I was lifting a clump of sand. You know how when you reach into your flour or powdered sugar canister and you lift a lump but it's very loose lump so it just falls apart when you pick it up? That's how it felt. I have never seen anything like it in all the years I've been baking! So weird! I had piped 5 full sheets and for some reason I continued to bake all of them. Hoping for a different outcome. I just now got through throwing them all into the compost bin.

These are very basic shortbread ingredients and I have made shortbread many times. The only thing different was the extreme mixing time. It's like they were ultra tenderized. I can't help but thinking if I had beat the dough maybe....4 or 5 minutes if they would be tender but not like sand. Any thoughts? I usually can tell when something I'm baking is going to turn out to be a disaster but this was so deceiving. I thought they were perfect all the way till the end!

Oh yeah! I was excited at this point!

Check out the sprinkles! These reminded me of the little cookies you'd buy in a Italian bakery.

I tried really hard to capture the "sand" like texture. Really! It was like "POOF" when you touched them! Unbelievable!

2 comments:

Ohhh, and they were looking so cute too! I'm sorry for your shortbread disaster :( I don't know much about shortbreads, so I'm clueless as to why it didn't work! I just recently had my own kitchen disaster trying to learn to make pie crust (though it finally worked out in the end).

Heidi

My name is Heidi. I live in Seattle and I love to bake. Please take your time and browse my collection of baking recipes & experiments. Most of them good....some...well, not so good. I'm honest with my reviews so you know what to avoid! Please email me if you have questions or just want to chat! I'd love to hear from you. nillanamba@gmail.com